


the threat of nonbeing

by elumish



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Anxiety Attacks, Anxiety Disorder, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-31
Updated: 2017-05-31
Packaged: 2018-11-07 10:34:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11057163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elumish/pseuds/elumish
Summary: Yuri is shaking so hard he can’t see.He turns into a jump, spins, over-rotates, falls, gets back up, and is skating again, the walls rushing past him in a blur, and he thinks about doing a step sequence, or a spin, or something else, but that small quivering place in his brain balks, and he hears a noise that he hopes isn’t coming from him, and he turns into a jump, spins, falls, gets back up, jumps, spins, falls, stands, jumps, spins, falls.





	the threat of nonbeing

Yuri is shaking so hard he can’t see.

He turns into a jump, spins, over-rotates, falls, gets back up, and is skating again, the walls rushing past him in a blur, and he thinks about doing a step sequence, or a spin, or something else, but that small quivering place in his brain balks, and he hears a noise that he hopes isn’t coming from him, and he turns into a jump, spins, falls, gets back up, jumps, spins, falls, stands, jumps, spins, falls.

Considers not getting back up.

His entire body aches, the line of his left calf to thigh one solid bruise.

He shakes.

He can do this. He knows he can do this. He’s landed harder jumps a thousand times over, has landed quads in competition, and today he can’t even do a triple toe loop without crashing.

His body has betrayed him, he thinks. His body has broken, and that’s why he’s shaking, why the whole world is shaking around him.

He’s failed.

He’s a failure.

Someone says something in English, and his brain won’t translate the words, can barely recognize they’re in English. He thinks he doesn’t care.

But then the thought of someone seeing him like this, sprawled on the ice, makes him feel naked and vulnerable, and he pushes himself to his feet, clenching his hands so nobody can see them shaking. He doesn’t shake. He’s Yuri Plisetsky, Ice Tiger of Russia. He’s better than this.

It’s Katsudon standing there watching him, but Yuri can’t even think of him like that right now, can’t think of him by a name, can only think of him as _him_ , and there’s kindness in his eyes, and Yuri _hates_ him.

“What the fuck do you want?” he snaps, taking off towards _him_ because if he keeps standing there he’s going to shake apart. Moving feels better. He keeps moving.

 _He_ smiles at Yuri, and he looks sad, and Yuri wants to break something. “Did something happen, or did it just start?”

Yuri clamps cold fingers down on the bruise on his leg, hard, enough for it to hurt despite how cold it is. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He’s speaking in Russian, he realizes, but _he_ looks like he understands. Viktor’s probably teaching him, instead of working in the rink, working with Yuri.

“People think it’s always that something has to happen,” _he_ says in English, “but sometimes it just starts. A week before Nationals, when I was twenty, I woke up and crawled under my desk and sat there for four hours, until the shaking stopped and I could stand not to have something at my back. I thought I was never going to be able to leave, that if I went out I was going to shatter like a piece of glass.”

“I don’t care,” Yuri tells him, forcing it into English so _he_ doesn’t think he’s broken, or fucked up, or whatever.

“I broke three fingers once,” _he_ continues, like Yuri wants to be listening to this drivel about how weak _he_ is, “because I kept falling, and every time I fell my shaking got worse, and my need not to fall got stronger. I missed a double axel and broke three fingers and didn’t go to the hospital for two days because I didn’t want anyone to know how badly I had failed.”

Yuri digs his fingers into his legs until he can’t take the pressure anymore, then lets go, but he needs it, so he grabs at his wrists, his arms, something, because otherwise he’s going to shake apart. “Stop it.”

“Three weeks ago,” Yuuri says, and Yuri feels himself start crying, fuck, because he remember three weeks ago, remembers Yuuri stopping and turning pale and almost elbowing Viktor in the face when he tried to touch him. Viktor had said not to go after him, and Yuri hadn’t, and he hadn’t asked, and he hates himself. “Three weeks ago I stood alone in an empty room and cried and convinced myself that Viktor would leave me because I almost hit him and because I failed and because I couldn’t do anything right. I am successful and have a man who loves me, and some days I hate myself so much I would rather turn myself inside-out than live in my own body.”

“What do you do, then?” Yuri asks, and his voice sounds so scared.

Yuuri smiles at him. “Sometimes you cry in an empty room, and sometimes you skate until you forget all the noise in your head, and sometimes you get off the ice and go home and eat some katsudon.”

And then he offers Yuri his hand, and a smile, and a tissue.

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact: I have failed two martial arts belt tests on the same technique because it makes me so anxious.


End file.
